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This is my favorite time of the baseball year. Yeah, that’s right, the Major Leagues are not currently playing games. Not on the field anyway. Next week MLB holds what they call the Winter Meetings. It’s like a Shriner’s Convention with player swapping. It’s in Nashville too! two of my three favorite things in the same place. Excellent. Too bad none of my baseball songs ever got a record. . ..

The rise of the Player’s Association & free agency with it’s tangled web of contractual traps, i.e. stratospheric salaries, media shares, player agents, no trade clauses, limited trade clauses, player options & buyouts etc. etc., have removed most of the fan fun. Making trades ain’t just a handshake anymore. Though, since the explosion of 24/7 sportstalk, internet reporting and yes, Bill Conlin: bloggers, the rumor mill is grinding harder than ever. The grist is finer having been gone over a million times. The facts, not so fine. Anyone can start a rumor now. I could, but as usual, that’s not why I’m here today.

Due to a billionaire owner’s Scrooge-like penny pinching, a much coveted pitcher Johan Santana ( Minnesota Twins LHP, 2 Cy Young awards ) may or may not be trade bait, before he can opt for free agency after the 2008 season. Though that depends on the offers. Blah blah blah. Because any such trade would involve the other team sending back young, but proven players and a substantial amount of money, not too many teams are up for it. Let’s forget the maybe teams and focus on two well known rivals. Yes sports fans, you guessed it or were exposed for a nanosecond to some form of media in the last 10 days, so you knew. It’s the Yankees & that Boston bunch.

Frankly, let’s forget about the Yankees. If they get Santana, great. Maybe. Their luck with bringing in big time arms from other teams either via trade or free agency, is very, not good, verging on spooky bad. So, pardon me if I don’t get all ecstatic thinking about Johan Santana in the ace role ( rhymes with ____ ) I come here not to praise Soxus, but to bury them. As for the Minn. Twins, they are acting like a 15 year old girl with two popular boys fighting over her. They should be grounded with all Great Mall of the America’s privileges revoked until after graduation.

The definition of psychological projection is: the unconscious transfer of one’s own desires or emotions to another. Several years ago, Boston CEO Larry Lucchino referred to his down south Bronx nemesis in such a way as to portray the bled Sawx as the team led by Luke Skywalker. But as their recent record indicates, the Bostons are anything but lambs to the Yankee lions. The Red Sox won a World Series in 2004 and when the 2006 season started only 7 players from that roster remained! and one of them was traded tout de suite.* Even less were left when they popped the tediously cliched champagne for this past 2007 WS victory.

When Lucchino, much more Darth Vaderesque than George Steinbrenner at this point, puked the Evil Empire yack all over the NYY, he was obviously projecting. Just last year he outbid the Yankees for Japanese pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka, and it wasn’t for just dangling a sushi franchise and a traveling personal masseuse, though the latter was part of the deal. If the Red Sox organization manages to acquire Santana without giving up even one of their acclaimed untouchable, admittedly terrific young players and/or pitchers, they will have dropped the veil for even the blindest to see them for what they really are. The Twins should include a lifetime supply of Beano for the Boston front office, Santana can hand deliver it the day he puts a Sox uni shirt on over his suit for the big press conference. Talk about lame sport’s practices, that’s as dumb as they come. AND quite the sporty look too; just don’t get why that hasn’t caught on amongst the hoi polloi.

They call the big goofy left wall in Fenway Park–The Green Monster. But it’s the green-eyed monster that resides all curled up & hissing in Boston ( thank you Kevin Cronin ). Caveat emptor, Caesar Lauritius il Bocco Grasso, caveato esay! Gautama Buddha aside, our country’s poster boy for Karma, Earl Hickey can tell you, you better watch out. You just might get what you deserve. Sure, in between you might win a World Series or 2, but the next time you call people names, everybody will know why. . ..

* close enough, damn if I’m going to be more than 86% accurate about the Bled Sox